Love, Life and Rational Polyamory

Tag Archives: Depression

Oh my goodness: A thirty eight minute flight on a plane which was filled with excited and chatty senior citizens. Special Man Friend found a dirt cheap weekend package, and apparently it’s very popular with the over 65 crowd. It’s been a good giggle. (I know I’m no spring chicken. But come on! I’ve got fifteen years until I’m even sixty!)

We are here until tomorrow. It’s been good for me I think. Mostly the sleep. SMF played poker last night, and I slept from 8:30 on.

Wait. Maybe I am ready to be part of the Senior’s Fun Tour. Darn.

SMF saw Mrs. A several times in the last week. It was hard for me. I hate that it’s hard for me. I am trying to be gentle with myself. I have been able to relax more about his weekly date with her. But midway through his third time seeing her in a week, I just had reached some kind of critical mass. It doesn’t matter how secure I am in the fact that he loves me. It doesn’t matter how reassuring he is. It doesn’t matter how many self-love techniques I use, or poly books I read.

I am a poly girl, with a mono- minded heart. I work hard to be happy. I am loved, and I know that SMF will be there for me, whatever I need. But man, it’s hard sometimes. I am not sure how to navigate this specific issue. In three and a half years with him, I haven’t ever had to deal with him having three dates with someone else in a single week. It sounds silly when I type it out, but it is not silly. I am a good person with real feelings. I have to forgive myself for struggling, because the last thing I need is to be mad at myself for having feelings.

So do I suck it up and deal? Do I ask him to slow down a little for my sanity? Do I just wait and see if it happens again? I think this week may have been a fluke, but I was completely blindsided by the intensity of my discomfort. CC is out of town, and there has been so much going on the last few weeks, that date nights have been moved around and his time with Mrs. A has been inconsistent. I tell myself that he has consistently been there for me, and I am not losing time with him.

But there’s still part of me that is uncomfortable. I think I’m afraid. Afraid that he doesn’t have room for all three of us, and that I will get the proverbial boot. Afraid that she is cuter, funner (funner is totally a word), thinner, newer, smiley-er, easier, simpler, sexier… happier. And who wouldn’t want to be around someone who was happy.

Things have been really heavy lately. Special Man has not once, batted an eye about taking on what he can in an effort to support me, and to support my kids. He is my best friend, and my biggest supporter. The bulk of my life falls on me, and he knows that. But when he steals me away for a cup of coffee, or lets me cry while he holds me, or takes the kids to the library he gives me the chance to breathe. The chance to regroup. The chance to find some peace again. He honors his commitment to me.

I’m sitting on the fringes of a noisy, smokey casino, with a very bad cup of coffee, while he upstairs in our room, stealing a nap for an hour. (The biggest shock to my system on this little trip has been the smoke filled casinos. In Idaho, you can’t smoke in public places unless you’re in a designated smoking area, so this level of second hand smoke is making me nuts!)

Tomorrow we head home. I feel good. I had a doctor’s appointment a few days ago (a follow up for my cancer history) and she found a few things in my bloodwork that we are hopeful will be able to be corrected with changes in medication and , supplements and I’m making a six week recovery plan to deal with the physical and emotional aftermath of the last few months.

I started writing my blog because I needed to think out loud. I needed to organize my thoughts, in words, sentences; paragraphs. Along the way people noticed, and that was good too. I got feedback and validation and support. I heard from people who liked that I was so honest about the sometimes downright weirdness of polyamory. As if I could be anything else. I’m not an expert. I’m not even very good at it.

I’m tired. And there’s no sun in the sky. There’s been an inversion that makes everything dim and gray. Today I had all my lights on, my windows open AND my lightbox on, in an attempt to get some UV light. I wanted to go to bed and just lay there. Instead, I made my bed. I got dressed and ran two small errands, and had my hair done.

I’m exhausted.

I fed the kids, I finished editing two photo shoots. These are successes. I should feel productive. I should feel good. Instead the voice in my head keeps a running list of everything I didn’t get done.

I’m okay. (There’s not an actual voice in my head, I’m just a little depressed, not hallucinatory.)

Things are very rocky with Special Man Friend and me. But I don’t think I trust my judgement right now.

And writing that, just now, actually makes me feel a little better. I don’t need to do, or decide, or figure anything out right now. Not tonight. Not tomorrow. He’s not going anywhere.

I’ve tried. My brain says eat. But I feel sick. Sick with that dread feeling, when there’s so much spilt milk that you are certain you will never be able to clean it up. There will always be another spot, another drop, another puddle.

In the Mormon church, there’s this scripture, about how there “needs be opposition in all things.” It’s used to comfort people in hard times, but also to make people feel superior when bad things happen. I think when I was a girl, I mixed up the scripture with Newton’s law, the one about “equal and opposite reactions.” If you get really good things in life, then you have to get really bad things too. That’s balance. That’s life.

The problem with this theory, is that there is no real balance. The starving, dying children of the world, do not have anything equal, but good, to counteract the fact that they are dying in multitudes. I suppose you could balance out the starving masses with the obese video- game playing children of the world who have plenty to eat, but I doubt that’s what God, or Newton had in mind.

I had a really, truly, to the core, rough year. It could have been worse, I am very aware. I had three children, each with a rare cancer syndrome (which they were gifted by me), undergo major surgery; all three within eight weeks of each other. As sole emotional, as well as financial caregiver, I am utterly exhausted. I keep telling myself to be grateful that nobody died. To be thankful that nobody needed long courses of chemo or radiation. I’ve reprimanded myself for emotions that range from feeling sorry for myself, to downright anger. My emotional reserves are depleted, and yet, the emotional demands on me remain the same. I’m still the mom. I’m still the grown up. I still cannot escape.

I am not really coping as well as I expected.

Add to the mix, a very intense relationship that almost ended, and several strong friendships that ended very badly, and it all makes for a very bitter girl, who is tired, and simply cannot lift her head up to see over the walls she has built in order to protect herself.

I sat in the hospital, in the dead of night, so angry at one friend in particular, because I loved her with all my heart, and she should have been there for me, and she should have been there for my children. I know her heart, and I feel the loss of her every day, and I know my kids miss her too.

Everyone leaves. Everyone changes.

This is the lesson I’ve learned this year. People can be mean. And people includes me.

For 1209 days, I have been loved by a man who is just as broken as I am, though I may have finally built my walls high enough to keep him out too. This beautiful man, with eyes the color of root beer, looked at me last night and told me he wasn’t sure we should be together. The light was fading from his eyes.

I’ve finally figured it out. It doesn’t matter if I’m poly or not poly. Not one bit. It only matters that I can accept the love and happiness that he gives me, for what it is, without fear of the pain and uncertainty of what might come with it. Will probably come with it. Because for every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction. You take the good with the bad.

Because this man makes me happy. He sees good in me. I’m a better person, because he holds up a mirror and doesn’t let me look away. In the mirror I see a scared girl, who can almost always hold everything together, until she can’t. And he isn’t afraid to tell me that I’m starting to drown, and he can’t come with me.

“If you give up,” he said, “if you drown, I can’t let you drown me along with you. So please, swim for your life.”

The air hostess
with her smiling fingers
sings the speech of The Oxygen Mask,
of putting your own on first
which, of course is (not) selfish
but
we tend to be of no use
to anyone
if we are gasping for breath.

I breathe, somewhere
between
lightheaded, and useless
the soft plastic of the face mask
sweating in my hand.

But the drift is selfish, and I
am not allowed to be
useless
so I pull the mask close to my mouth
and continue to
suffocate.

I remember the electric anticipation of Christmas Eve when I was a small girl. Christmas was magic at my house. My mother lived and breathed Christmas. We did not have a lot of money, but Christmas was absolutely monumental. Toys laid out from Santa, everywhere; stockings overflowing with treasures. My mom loved it. Sugar cookies and a gingerbread house every year. When my sisters and I woke up on Christmas morning, the tree was magically covered with candy canes that had not been there when we went to sleep. It was a wonderful touch.

I am getting a little bit excited this afternoon, though in my own muted adult-ish way. Tonight my kidlets and I are having a fun “appetizer dinner”, and the meatballs are already working in the crockpot. Special Man Friend is joining us, and it’s a little bittersweet, because I had hoped that at some point CC would be included in life with my kids, but we just aren’t there. (I used to say, we aren’t there YET, but there’s been a shift within myself the past few weeks, and I am realizing that maybe we won’t ever get there.) But I am excited about having him here tonight. Last year at Christmas, he was out of state with CC visiting their families. The previous year, we had just started dating, and were nowhere near considering sharing holidays. Shoot, I had no plans to even introduce him to my kids at all. Ever.

The holidays have been a challenge this year. I know a lot of people struggle. For me, its an overwhelming sense of pressure to be good enough, to do enough, to make things fun and perfect and memorable. Generally, I consider myself a failed perfectionist, and I have to fight the tendency I have to give up and do nothing, lest I risk failing at doing the perfect thing. It’s a little bit ridiculous.

Tonight we are going to just chill out and eat, and decorate waffle cone Christmas trees with canned frosting and candy. We will drag our pillows and blankets downstairs and cuddle up in front of the Miracle on 34th Street (the one from the 90’s, its my favorite!). I can’t wait.

I have a therapist, who I have seen on and off again since 2008. He’s wonderful at reflecting back ME, to myself. I use him when I need to focus. Sometimes I use him just to verbalize what I already know, and need to hear out loud. I saw him this morning.

“When are you happiest?” he asked me.

“Right after sex”, I said. That was easy, I thought.

We talked about my tendency to overthink and worry. We talked about how I hate it when Special Man tells me to be a duck, as he does, often. (As in letting things roll off my back.) We talked about how his nonchalance about certain (many) things is at odds with my natural stress patterns, and Therapist suggested that we may even be amplifying our differences in an effort to counteract the other. We talked about how I’ve cried more in the last two years than I probably have in all my previous years, and Therapist thought that was a wonderful thing, because I’m not “closed up tight” any more.

“You can’t fuck all the time,” he said. Damn, I thought. “Your homework is to be aware of what you are feeling, and find some other things that make you happy. Try something new.”

Tonight I came across this, and I wanted to share it here, but I couldn’t embed it. Take a few minutes to follow the link, especially if you are a broken girl, like me. It’s sweet and sentimental, but even my cynical side was smiling.

A good portion of my interactions with Special Man Friend take place via technology like text, email, and Google Talk. He lives twenty minutes away from me (twenty five on a heavy traffic day…) and I see him at least once a week, usually twice. It’s important to me to have some daily contact, though I think his need for it is a little less than mine. He knows me well, and if a day passes without hearing from me, he knows something is up and he hunts me down, which I enjoy. (I’m such a girl.)

Because of this concentrated, pared down type of communication, I have learned to ask for what I need. Whatever is going on in my head, in my life, in my day, I know that Special Man will be there for me. Don’t get me wrong, there have been those times he’s failed miserably at giving me what I ask for, and there have been other times when I have been so out of touch with myself that he was scrambling to connect with me and I was simply out of reach and oblivious.

Yesterday was not such a good day for me. The details are inconsequential, it was just one of those days when life piles up, and all I really wanted was to turn out the lights and cuddle up with someone who loves me, and not talk. But that’s not the structure of my relationship. I have to find alternate ways to nurture myself and my partner. Here is a part of the conversation that relaxed me into the rest of my night. When it was finished, I put myself to bed early, knowing I was loved and wanted and that one bad day didn’t change any of that.

Me: could you please just tell me something you like about me

Him: of course. I like the way you laugh and blush with incredulity when I point out some little flaw or quirk you thought you were keeping hidden.

that was a weird-ish request. Was that intended for someone else?

(I LOVE those little flaws and quirks, btw)

Me: who else would I ask for something weird-ish like that??

that was rhetorical

Him: Also. I like the supremely girlish lilt of your voice. It is really awesome (it was the word ‘just’ that made it seem a little out of place, that’s all…)

Me: That was a good answer btw

Him: I like the way you smile big and arch your eyebrows sometimes when we talk.

Me: (okay I could see that. the just was a manifestation of my frustration as to what the hell is wrong with me.)